Audit workplace simulations as a methodology to increase undergraduates’ awareness of competences

ABSTRACT

This paper describes an audit workplace simulation and investigates its effects on students’ perceptions of competences, required as important in the auditing industry. Within the competence-based teaching framework, this training activity involves cooperative learning as it combines first-undergraduate and senior students within one team. First, we explore how some key competences are initially appreciated by first-year students. Second, our research empirically assesses how the simulation modifies students’ awareness of those competences. Results of the pretest reveal that senior students’ awareness on key competences is higher than of first-undergraduate students. In particular, communication skills are initially not considered as relevant by the first-year students. Results of the posttest reveal that our intervention significantly improves first-undergraduates’ awareness of technical accounting knowledge and communication skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Cooperative learning
• competence-based education
• teamwork
• leadership
• communication skills
• workplace simulation

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article benefited from the presentation at the ‘XV AECA Meeting’ held in Ofir-Esposende (Portugal) in September 2012, and the ‘II International Symposium on Partial Least Squares Path Modeling’ held in Sevilla (Spain) in June 2015. It was also presented at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) in October 2014. We would like to thank the Department of Accountancy and Finance of this university and especially Prof. Dr. Ann Jorissen for her very helpful comments. Additionally, we thank the anonymous referees and the guest editors Prof. Dr. Patricia Everaert and Dr. Evelien Opdecam for their extensive constructive feedback on the paper. None of these individuals bears responsibility for any of the views expressed here. This work is part of the research group ‘SEJ-425 – Information to enhance business competitiveness’ of the Andalusian Government (Spain).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Tertiary education corresponds to ISCED 2011 Levels 5 (short-cycle of two years at least), 6 (Bachelor’s or equivalent level), 7 (Master’s or equivalent level) and 8 (Doctoral or equivalent level) according to UNESCO’s International Standard Classification of Education (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2012).

2 The competence-based teaching approach expands the student’s tasks beyond the acquisition of technical knowledge, to the acquisition of methodological competences (e.g. analysis and synthesis of information, decision-making …) and participatory skills (e.g. leadership, teamwork …) (González et al., 2012, p. 111).

3 Issued by the Group of Experts in Accounting of the Spanish Securities Market Commission and entitled ‘Compilation of Questions and Answers’; as public access is unavailable their content is not reproduced in this article due to copyright rules.